“In this case, then, clothes would ‘make’ the woman.”
Molina quirked a weary smile at his joke. She didn’t expect the expensive labels from any of a dozen casino shopping malls to reveal much more than the extent of Vassar’s clothing habit. But a cell phone might be a lot more “talkative.”
7
Beasts of Eden
There was no cell phone.
“Now this doesn’t make sense,” Molina commented aloud.
The technician in charge was a multi-earringed twenty-something whose eyes were still glued with envy on the slinky, shiny clothes Vassar had worn.
“This stuff is to die for.”
Molina avoided the obvious comeback. Most coroner facility mid-level techs were high school grads so ecstatic about the rewarding pay scale that they overcame any nicety about peeling fingerprints off the dead and other unpleasant tasks.
And they lived in a world where black humor was the best defense against depression.
“If any relatives step forward to arrange a funeral,” Molina said, “they’ll have to find something else to bury her in, that’s for sure.”
“Oh, these are too cool to bury.” The gloved technician pushed the soft silken folds back into their paper bags. Paper was more preservative than plastic when it came to fabrics.
Molina frowned at the iridescent snakeskin purse as it disappeared. One of those glitzy toy purses that cost a bundle but were only big enough to hold credit cards, tight curls of cash, and a decorative lipstick case.
No cell phone.
Vassar had to have carried a cell phone, or a pager. Where was it?
Max Kinsella stared at his own words on the computer screen with a sense of disappointment.
Temple made writing, and talking, look so easy. With her it was a flow, a part of her personality. He could sling a bit of patter himself. A professional magician had to be a silver-tongued devil to some extent. But when it came to setting word after word down on a computer screen, he found something lacking.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had a head start. Gandolph the Great’s memoirs were packed with fascinating stories about debunking phony mediums. Max had taken them up after Gandolph’s death last Halloween to finish what his mentor had started.
He was living in the man’s house, after all, and one bedroom was crammed with the machines of his stage illusions. The ghost of Orson Welles, former owner of the manse, an amateur magician of note and a film genius, hovered over the place as well.
Why couldn’t Max make something of what Gandolph had started?
Maybe he wasn’t a writer.
He was probably too tired to worry about this project now, but he was also too wired to sleep. His face and body ached, not a lot, but enough that three ibuprofens didn’t totally kill the pain.
Last night had been taxing, to say the least. After weeks of undercover work on both their parts, he and Molina had missed out on capturing the Stripper Killer. While they’d been duking it out mano-a-mana in a strip-club parking lot, Temple had been fighting for her life with the killer in another strip-club parking lot.
He’d finally allowed Molina to capture him, knowing no handcuffs would hold him, but the fact left an ugly taste at the back of his throat, like bile.
He’d never gotten into this kind of a macho contest with a woman before and his mid-thirties’ mind was old enough that a touch of chivalry cramped his style with the combative lieutenant.
Then to know that she’d made him too late to save Temple anyway, that it had been her hated ex-lover, Rafi Nadir, who had been there to do it … the only consolation to Max’s ego was that the pepper spray he’d given Temple had helped her hold off the killer until Nadir could come along and deck him.
He was an ex-cop, Nadir, and must still relish a bust, even if his shady present didn’t permit him to hang around to get the credit.
Max grinned at the annoying words on the screen. His words, that wouldn’t obey and look gracious. Molina would split her spleen to know that her loathed ex had chivalrously come to Temple’s rescue.
The Iron Lieutenant had looked pretty spleen-split when he’d left her handcuffed to her own steering wheel. Max chuckled. Never mess with a magician.
Then he frowned. Someone had messed with Gandolph the Great. No one had been charged with his mid-séance murder at the Halloween haunted house attraction. Garry Randolph had been Max’s mentor in magic and the counterterrorism life, his only family for years. Max had done nothing to avenge or solve his death except try to finish his book, and to do a mediocre job at that. Temple could help him fix the book, and she might even help him clear up Garry’s death.
Max tapped his fingers on the keyboard so lightly that no letters appeared on the screen.
Several psychics and mediums had been present for Garry’s death. He had been there in disguise to expose the frauds among them. Garry would say all of them. Someone more open minded, or imaginative, like Temple, would say most of them. She had been impressed by a couple of the psychics.
But Garry, he hadn’t performed for years. His mission the last years of his life had been revealing the tricks behind the illusions. Unlike the Cloaked Conjuror, he hadn’t built a mega-million Las Vegas headlining act out of it. Now the Cloaked Conjuror was facing death threats, and Max had to wonder if Garry’s death had been the first act of a plot to kill renegade magicians who gave away trade secrets.
Which brought up the mysterious Synth, supposedly a band of magicians who punished magicians who told. Even Garry’s former assistant, Gloria Fuentes, had been found dead a couple months ago in a church parking lot, one of a series of strangled women whose deaths might, or might not, be related.
And now CC had partnered with the strange female magician Shangri-La.
Max ran last night through his head again, but it didn’t come out any less cluttered. First there was the realization that Temple was a target for the Stripper Killer, then his own compelling need to reach and protect her. Yes, he was protective of Temple, call it what you would. He was bigger, sadder, wiser. She was the last, best hope the limited life his work as a counterterrorism agent had allowed since his late teens. While he had roamed the world working onstage illusions, he had foiled offstage attempts to kill innocent civilians. It was a career choice he hadn’t chosen and no one retired from.
Max was trying to be the first. Gandolph had preceded him in that attempt and Gandolph was dead.
Max wasn’t dead yet. He grinned again at the screen. And he sure wasn’t a writer. Where there’s imperfection, there’s hope.
Back to last night. He had tried not to damage Molina to the point where she could press charges, which meant he’d had to take a few blows, yet appear subdued. That was the hardest part. Max had built a life on refusing to be subdued.
When the news of the attack at Baby Doll’s had come over Molina’s radio, he had raced there to collect Temple after the crime scene officers let her go and whisk her home to the Circle Ritz and the frantic comfort of a man with nothing good in his life but her. Then, restless in the wee hours, he had stolen away from a sleeping Temple to seek out his own kind, the caged Big Cats, trained to perform, who had been saved from fates worse than death to join the Cloaked Conjuror’s menagerie. It was the best situation for them, but they were as trapped, in a way, as he was, by what they were and what they could do. Dangerous beasts.
And then she had appeared: the most dangerous game of all. Shangri-La, whose likeness and act were a combination of Japanese Kabuki theater and Kung Fu. He could still see her flying though the air above the stage at the Opium Den like an ax, sharp and lethal, all tattered robes and tongues of sable hair, crimson nails as long as a switch blade, face hidden by dead-white makeup with a scarlet mask defining the cheekbones and eyes. And lips.
She had confronted him on his visit to the big cats, broadcasting contempt and threat. A small woman with major mojo.